Microsoft Dynamics GP 2010 Beta Not Sparking Excitement for Partners

Despite the buzz surrounding the beta release of Microsoft Dynamics GP 2010, the latest version of the product, multiple partners say there is really no "wow" factor to make customers stand up and take notice.

"I didn't see anything in my review of the documentation that [made me say], ‘Wow. I'm glad they finally incorporated that' or ‘Wow I can't believe they're able to do that with the software,'" said one partner who is testing the beta version of the software. "It's more just an improvement and an enhancement over the GP 10 functionality, pretty much across the board in most of the modules. But it wasn't ‘Wow, I had to have that type of feature' that I noticed."

Other partners agreed that GP 2010 doesn't really offer any particularly exciting features.  The partners said GP 2010, set to be generally available in May, is primarily a further integration with the Microsoft Office suite of tools, without a lot of perceived changes from GP 10, the current version of the product.  

"I've been working with GP for 13 years, and none of the new features really jump out at me," another partner said. "But I know what customers are going to be excited about. And I guess the boldest feature that it has is the Template Reporting feature, which gives users the ability to create customer-facing, and vendor-facing documents in Microsoft Word and gives them the ability to print those documents through Word."

"There are some enhancements they've made through some of the modules to make using GP a little easier but my take on it is that it's continuing on that path of integration with the Office suite," he said.

One valuable change in GP 2010 ...